Book of the Dead (Spoiler!)

Nope, this has got nothing to do with Imhotep and Anck Su Namun! I recently finished reading this book by Patricia Cornwell and lived to tell the tale. Much as I like watching CSI – Miami and CSI- New York and CSI – everywhere else, I am not a fan of blood splattered murder scenes and mutilated bodies. But this book has plenty of both and that could be why I can totally relate to the expression “sick to my stomach” after finishing this book.

But that’s just one of my problems. My other and more fundamental problem is that all through the book I couldn’t shake this feeling that I have walked in on a movie right after the intermission. That was because I was reading this book without going through prior adventures of her weirdly-named Medical Examiner – Dr. Scarpetta.

Though I plead guilty as charged, I believe that the authoress hasn’t made it easy for a first time reader to figure out the characters and their relations with each other. It started with Maroni and Marino. Why, oh, why couldn’t Ms. Cornwell come up with different sounding last names?

As if I wasn’t having enough trouble sorting the two of them out in walked Dr. Self. I mean she literally drops out of thin air on an unsuspecting reader. For one whole page I was under the impression that Scarpetta is referred to as Dr. Self by people because maybe she is too pompous.

Then I got confused about who got murdered first – the Canadian tourist or Drew Martin. As if the body count wasn’t sufficiently high, poor Karen hanged herself. And I am still confused as to whether it was one lady who got murdered in her villa or there were 2 of them who got bumped off.

That’s in addition to wondering about who killed Little Will. It somehow doesn’t sound consistent with Will Rambo’s pattern of killing vulnerable ladies. But maybe I am thick when it comes to such psychologically complex crimes. Hell, I didn’t get “Silence of the lambs” when I watched it for the first time.

As for the other characters, I am not sure what the Italian carabinieri is doing in the plot. I am not sure what Dr. Self gets out of driving people to suicide. I don’t know what role Scarpetta's sweetheart Benton Wesley has played in her other adventures but here he doesn’t have much to do. Marino (or is it Maroni) has disappeared – possibly to surface again in some future thriller.

And I am left tearing my hair out like poor Mrs. Webster after reading this book which has vivid descriptions of mutilated decomposing bodies.

One thing however cannot be ignored. The descriptions of soldiers ending up with their guts hanging outside their bodies or survivors with deep emotional scars – no longer seem far-fetched. Mr. Bush, please read this book after November, 2008.